Mapping our musical landscape

James Lamb writes: When this project was conceived, we excitedly anticipated being introduced to artists beyond our existing sphere of listening. We looked forward to tracking down unfamiliar artists and exploring musical territories previously unknown to us. And so, for me, it has proven. As new playlists have been submitted, I’ve done the digital equivalent of flicking through record racks to find out who Cliff Martinez is and whether Themes from Vapourspace is an artist or a soundtrack (it's neither). As I read through online biographies and dragged my cursor over discographies for ‘new’ artists, I started to sense a pattern of where the music was coming from (in a geographical rather than a creative sense). UK - France - USA - Iceland – UK – Italy – France – Germany - Iceland again.  I began to wonder whether there was any geographical significance to the music that accompanies our learning? I started to question whether the music coming from a particular nation might reverberate particularly loudly within our learning spaces?

The easiest way of putting this to the test was to try and map the location of the artists shaping our learning spaces. Focusing on playlists where the author specifically cited the music as being an accompaniment to his or her engagement with the E-Learning programme, I attempted to represent the relative musical significance of different countries in the form of an infographic (click on the map to the right to view the full size image).

Click map to view in full size

A quick glance at the infographic offers some interesting ideas about our musical landscape. First of all, relatively few different countries are represented - the 40 nominated artists come from only 10 different countries. Does this suggest we have ‘tunnel listening’ when selecting music to accompany our learning?  Why do some countries leave an audio imprint greatly out of proportion to their size as a nation? Is there something about the Icelandic landscape that lends itself to the type of music that we find best accompanies and inspires our learning?

If not quite ruling the sound waves, British music figures heavily with twice as many artists compared to the second most significant nation, France. If you want to really dig into this however - and I did - Paris is currently the centre of our musical world with 6 artists who are best associated with La Ville-Lumière. In addition, the artwork for two of the submitted playlists capture Parisian street scenes (pictured right).

Music to (e)learn by

E-Melody!

Obviously, it’s too early to draw any conclusions based upon the small amount of submitted data/playlists. This exercise has simply been a gentle way of encouraging us to consider new ways in how we might view the submitted playlists. I must say however, I think we’ve established a compelling case for an MSc in E-Learning symposium in Paris next spring... [note to self – forward this entry to programme leaders]

James Lamb is a participant on the MSc in E-Learning and a listener of Gallic pop.